US EPA chief touts Trump’s energy plan

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, told members of the energy industry in Columbus on Friday that the Affordable Clean Energy plan will be “cleaner and more affordable.”

“We ... expect ACE to reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate-matter emissions. EPA projects that ACE will result in annual net benefits of anywhere from $120 million to $730 million. And here’s the bottom line: ACE will continue our nation’s environmental progress, and it will do so legally and with the proper respect for the states,” Wheeler told the audience of about 100 gathered at the offices of Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives on the North Side.

However, that runs contrary to what data from information within his agency shows.

Ohio, Wheeler’s home state, would actually have more harmful pollutants in President Donald Trump’s

new energy plan, according to an analysis done during the process of writing the ACE rule.

“The final EPA estimates show that under the final ACE rule, sulfur dioxide emissions — which are the most important for health in Ohio — will go up by 428 tons in Ohio in 2030, compared to doing nothing (e.g., business as usual with no policy whatsoever),” Kathy Fallon Lambert, senior adviser at the Center for Climate, Health and

the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in an email to The Dispatch.

The Affordable Clean Energy rule is in response to former President Barack Obama’s key initiatives to curtail fossil fuel emissions. The Trump administration’s new rule, which was announced in June, allows states to decide whether to require power plants to make limited efficiency upgrades.

Sulfur dioxide, which is one of the emissions from coal-fired plants, is harmful to the respiratory system, hampering breathing. Those who have asthma, for example, are particularly sensitive to the effects.

Ohio ranks third among 42 states in emissions of sulfur dioxide from coalfired plants, according to 2018 U.S. EPA emissions data examined by The Dispatch. Ohio is also home to the coal-fired power plant that emits the most carbon dioxide in the country, with 7,777,473 tons going into the atmosphere contributing to the climate crisis.

Wheeler, when asked by The Dispatch on Friday about sulfur dioxide emissions, said those emissions would be covered by other environmental regulations.

“I don’t think it’s fair to

just look at what that impact might be from the ACE rule. We do believe that all the criteria ... will go down under ACE,” he said. “And I understand that there are some other analyses that are being done by other organizations, but I think they’re missing the impact of the other regulations that we’re working on that will also reduce those pollutants.”

Fallon Lambert said that goes against what the EPA has predicted as the outcomes of the new policy.

“EPA’S own modeling shows this increase, and they purport to take all governing rules into account,” she said.

EPA’S projections show an estimated 300 to 1,500 people each year will die by 2030 due to more air pollution.

Wheeler told the audience that this new rule will be around for years

“That should set the course for the next generation for how EPA views CO2 emissions from the electricpower sector,” he said. “Of course, Congress could always step in with a change in the law. But we believe that this law, this regulation, follows the current law, and it will be the law of the land for at least another generation.